It took Texas Gov. Rick Perry only a month to nab frontrunner status from former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney. Another month later, he’s fighting to stay in the top tier while Romney has become the leader of the Republican Presidential primary race yet again.
And former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain? Well, he’s doing pretty well these days too.
New NBC-Marist polling of Iowa and New Hampshire, the first states in the primary season, show something old and something new in the GOP race. First, Romney is way ahead in New Hampshire, where he has maintained a lead the entire year. But Romney also jumped back ahead in the Iowa caucuses, months after Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had wrestled it away from him and after Perry then took the lead away from her. Now it’s Cain who Romney has to worry about: Romney leads the pack with 23 percent of Iowa GOP caucus-goers, followed by Cain at 20 percent.
In the Hawkeye State, Romney gets the support of 23 percent of likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers — identified based on interest, chance of voting and past participation — and Cain gets 20 percent.
They are followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 11 percent, while Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann are tied at 10 percent. Sixteen percent are undecided.
Among Tea Party supporters — who make up half of all likely Iowa caucus-goers in the poll — Cain is ahead of Romney, 31 to 15 percent. And among those who “strongly” support the Tea Party, Cain’s lead is a whopping 41 to 7 percent.
“That’s a group that Romney has to fear,” said [Lee] Miringoff [the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the survey]
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In a matchup against President Obama, there are still mixed results for Romney. The President is shown to be leading him in Iowa but down by nine points in New Hampshire. Obama carried both states in 2008. Perry does far worse in matchups with the President however, who leads him in Iowa by nine and by six in New Hampshire, further evidence that Romney is the more electable candidate in the general, should Republican voters chose to nominate him.
The NBC-Marst poll of Iowa used live telephone interviews with 371 likely caucus-goers from conducted from Oct. 3rd to the 5th, and has a sampling error of 5.1 percent. The general election sample was 2,836 registered voters and has a margin of error of 1.8 percent. The New Hampshire general election survey used live telephone interviews with 2,218 registered voters conducted the same time and has a sampling error of 2.1 percent.
